1969's The Stewardesses ("See the lusty stewardesses leap from the screen to your lap") "is the most profitable 3-D film in history" (Avatar may now have beaten it).
I'd say if you're happy with SD, a hacked Xbox (original) running XBMC is the best TV compatible media player money can buy -- even though it would cost you around $50.
Pay more for something with the oomph to decode HD. Personally I don't care enough about HD to do that.
I don't know whether I've just got one from a bad batch, but my Wii is terrible at streaming Flash video in its browser. Both BBC iPlayer and YouTube stop frequently to buffer.
I guess it could be lack of memory to buffer in. Or it could be a bad WiFi connection -- it's close to the AP and other nearby devices do fine.
I'd be mightily upset if I got this sort of performance on video that I'd paid for.
My memory of classic games is of games that you'd have to be superhuman to finish.
Games like Thrust, that do have a set number of levels - but then you play through again with reverse gravity, then with invisible landscapes, then with both at once.
Or Chuckie Egg, where you end up contending with all the enemies at once, turned invisible.
Elite didn't stop when you reached Elite status. You could play on and on.
Yes, there were also games on home computers and 8/16 bit consoles with a beginning, middle and end , and a "Congraturations" page.
But open ended games came first, and since then it's always been the case that both types of game were out there.
But all you want isn't just a voice, what you want is someone who can take someone else's movements and do a voice so well that even without a human body, you can still pick up on things like, emotions, fears, desires, interest, etc.
Just a nitpick: typically the voices are recorded first, and the animator matches the actions to the voice.
In movies, they're increasingly doing mo-cap and voice recording at the same time (e.g. Andy Serkis acting Gollum or Kong). Game cut scenes would be improved by using decent actors and adopting this technique.
World of Goo is a great game, but I don't think it follows that the money spent on big budget games is wasted.
To make the comparison with movies: lots of people like the low budget Clerks. But millions more like the expensive Lord of the Rings. Part of what they like is all that expensive looking grandeur. You couldn't make Lord of the Rings on Clerks' budget.
You couldn't make GTA IV on World of Goo's budget. I think there's room in this world for both games.
Professional voice acting is one of the things that have improved on gaming regardless hardware upgrades - and it does make a difference (if the game needs voice at all, of course).
Absolutely. I've just finished Bayonetta -- hardly a budget effort. They've clearly used professional voice actors, but even so it would have improved matters greatly if the acting had a bit more spark. Long speeches performed slowly and only just well enough -- well, it's a blot on an otherwise superb product.
Unless it's a handheld device that runs Flash and the game is a port of the $20 million Xbox 360/PC game to the handheld device.
I don't know of any such titles. Do you have one in mind? Handheld "versions" of games (e.g. gameboy versions) tend not to actually be the same game.
Then you lose iPhone and iPod Touch due to Apple's developer program restrictions.
Is that strictly true? As long as you distribute the VM and the code to run within it as a single bundle, and don't provide a way to load arbitrary code into the VM, I'd guess that would be OK with Apple. The iPhone C64 emulator was approved by Apple when they removed the ability to type in BASIC commands. (Then it was pulled again when it turned out the feature could be re-enabled as an easter egg).
I'm pretty sure TOA is talking about PC+Xbox360+PS3 and maybe Wii. Nobody's blowing $20M on making a Flash game.
Having said that, PopCap and their ilk make games in the space you're talking about. I'm certain Peggle didn't have a $20M budget.
A decent strategy for that kind of game would be to write for a VM, and implement that VM on all the target platforms. That was the approach taken by Infocom for their text adventures, and by LucasArts for their point+click adventures.
Somewhere there's an interview with PopCap, however, where they explain that they don't do that. They reuse what they can, but every version of Peggle is a "hard work" port. If that involves rewriting the physics engine in a different language, so be it.
Getting something to run on an Xbox 360, a PS3 and a Wii is very hard because they are very different platforms. So while there are frameworks and tools that help get the code running on all platforms, so the differences between the hardware is less of a hassle than it used to be, it's a lot of work making the game run *well* on all platforms.
However, the engine is a small fraction of the cost of a game, especially when an existing cross-platform engine is used (although even these often get tweaked).
Model design, level design, scripting, voice acting, motion capture; all these are very significant costs, and are portable. Level scripting is usually done in a higher level language than C, and is portable across platforms.
And, of course, each company has its own approval process, with its own UI standards, etc., as well as unique hardware to be taken into account (e.g. Wiimote). What this means is that while you can reuse the core logic, level design, etc., there's still tons of work to do for each additional platform.
True enough. Xbox Achievements and so forth.
I'd still argue, though, that the reason cross-platform games tend to correlate with expensive-to-make games, is that having spend megabucks on designing a game, publishers want as many potential buyers as possible.
(The key exceptions, of course, being Sony or MS exclusives, which those companies use to increase the prestige of their platforms)
What a lot of dipshits here like to try to point out is that just because a relationship is visible between two measurements, it does not mean that one is necessarily responsible for the other. Of course, even idiots are aware of this,
A surprising number of people (not even idiots) often fail to realise this. Examples abound.
The stupidest thing I did was attach the reply to the wrong message.
The correlation is between games being multi-platform, and being around double the cost. The post I *meant* to reply to, expressed surprise that multi-platform development should be expensive.
Nitpicking about the exact phrase is not particularly welcome, thanks. We could argue about the subtle nuances of the word "imply". For certain uses you could argue that correlation does "imply" causation in the colloquial use of the term rather than the mathematical use.
I'd have thought the logic from the publishers would be, if we're going to spend $20M on a game, we'd better make it multi-platform in order to sell more copies.
I don't see why this is surprising. A game has as much visual design per frame as a Hollywood CGI movie, yet is typically much longer. Add to that the interactivity. The hours of dialogue. The playtesting.
It's surprising that games are cheaper to make than movies.
But "highly indented code", i.e. running out of space on the right, often means you're trying to do too much in one routine. Linus once stated that if you had trouble sticking to the 80 column, 8 char indent kernel coding style rules, you should be breaking your code into more functions.
However certain styles of JavaScript programming (and Java, with anonymous inner classes) cause you to open a lot of brackets -- and therefore indent a long way -- for otherwise quite terse statements. That's what the GP was getting at.
You can do functional programming in languages that don't enforce functional programming.
The GP makes the valid point that people sometimes use anonymous functions when a named function would be clearer.
Instead of (hypothetical language): myList.map({// some complex inline anonymous function }); ... instead... function transform {// some complex code }
myList.map(transform);
It can increase clarity, and reduces the depth of indentation the GGP was complaining about.
The Red Lion in Hunningham, Warwickshire, uses pneumatic tubes to shuttle food orders to the kitchen (the order, not the food). The tubes are transparent and take a slightly convoluted route, so it's fun to watch.
What you wouldn't expect from that, is that it's a reasonably traditional country pub in most respects...
Slashdot Mirror
1969's The Stewardesses ("See the lusty stewardesses leap from the screen to your lap") "is the most profitable 3-D film in history" (Avatar may now have beaten it).
+1
I'd say if you're happy with SD, a hacked Xbox (original) running XBMC is the best TV compatible media player money can buy -- even though it would cost you around $50.
Pay more for something with the oomph to decode HD. Personally I don't care enough about HD to do that.
I don't know whether I've just got one from a bad batch, but my Wii is terrible at streaming Flash video in its browser. Both BBC iPlayer and YouTube stop frequently to buffer.
I guess it could be lack of memory to buffer in. Or it could be a bad WiFi connection -- it's close to the AP and other nearby devices do fine.
I'd be mightily upset if I got this sort of performance on video that I'd paid for.
My memory of classic games is of games that you'd have to be superhuman to finish.
Games like Thrust, that do have a set number of levels - but then you play through again with reverse gravity, then with invisible landscapes, then with both at once.
Or Chuckie Egg, where you end up contending with all the enemies at once, turned invisible.
Elite didn't stop when you reached Elite status. You could play on and on.
Yes, there were also games on home computers and 8/16 bit consoles with a beginning, middle and end , and a "Congraturations" page.
But open ended games came first, and since then it's always been the case that both types of game were out there.
C was designed with platform Independence in mind. 90% of the C code is portable across platforms.
Perhaps if the C code in question was carefully written for portability.
If that's not done, even porting a C program from one UNIX to another can be challenging - different system header files, different endianness, etc.
Read a 613 page book before trying to write portable C.
But all you want isn't just a voice, what you want is someone who can take someone else's movements and do a voice so well that even without a human body, you can still pick up on things like, emotions, fears, desires, interest, etc.
Just a nitpick: typically the voices are recorded first, and the animator matches the actions to the voice.
In movies, they're increasingly doing mo-cap and voice recording at the same time (e.g. Andy Serkis acting Gollum or Kong). Game cut scenes would be improved by using decent actors and adopting this technique.
It turns out that many movies are actually cheaper than these big games.
http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/records/allbudgets.php
$20M was the budget for Into The Wild - no blowing up tanks there, but lots of location shooting.
28 Days Later: $15M
Bubba Ho-Tep: $1M
El Mariachi: $7000
World of Goo is a great game, but I don't think it follows that the money spent on big budget games is wasted.
To make the comparison with movies: lots of people like the low budget Clerks. But millions more like the expensive Lord of the Rings. Part of what they like is all that expensive looking grandeur. You couldn't make Lord of the Rings on Clerks' budget.
You couldn't make GTA IV on World of Goo's budget. I think there's room in this world for both games.
Professional voice acting is one of the things that have improved on gaming regardless hardware upgrades - and it does make a difference (if the game needs voice at all, of course).
Absolutely. I've just finished Bayonetta -- hardly a budget effort. They've clearly used professional voice actors, but even so it would have improved matters greatly if the acting had a bit more spark. Long speeches performed slowly and only just well enough -- well, it's a blot on an otherwise superb product.
Unless it's a handheld device that runs Flash and the game is a port of the $20 million Xbox 360/PC game to the handheld device.
I don't know of any such titles. Do you have one in mind? Handheld "versions" of games (e.g. gameboy versions) tend not to actually be the same game.
Then you lose iPhone and iPod Touch due to Apple's developer program restrictions.
Is that strictly true? As long as you distribute the VM and the code to run within it as a single bundle, and don't provide a way to load arbitrary code into the VM, I'd guess that would be OK with Apple. The iPhone C64 emulator was approved by Apple when they removed the ability to type in BASIC commands. (Then it was pulled again when it turned out the feature could be re-enabled as an easter egg).
Could it be that the facts given about GT5 are an interesting associated fact, to the related information about multiplatform games.
I'm pretty sure TOA is talking about PC+Xbox360+PS3 and maybe Wii. Nobody's blowing $20M on making a Flash game.
Having said that, PopCap and their ilk make games in the space you're talking about. I'm certain Peggle didn't have a $20M budget.
A decent strategy for that kind of game would be to write for a VM, and implement that VM on all the target platforms. That was the approach taken by Infocom for their text adventures, and by LucasArts for their point+click adventures.
Somewhere there's an interview with PopCap, however, where they explain that they don't do that. They reuse what they can, but every version of Peggle is a "hard work" port. If that involves rewriting the physics engine in a different language, so be it.
Getting something to run on an Xbox 360, a PS3 and a Wii is very hard because they are very different platforms. So while there are frameworks and tools that help get the code running on all platforms, so the differences between the hardware is less of a hassle than it used to be, it's a lot of work making the game run *well* on all platforms.
However, the engine is a small fraction of the cost of a game, especially when an existing cross-platform engine is used (although even these often get tweaked).
Model design, level design, scripting, voice acting, motion capture; all these are very significant costs, and are portable. Level scripting is usually done in a higher level language than C, and is portable across platforms.
And, of course, each company has its own approval process, with its own UI standards, etc., as well as unique hardware to be taken into account (e.g. Wiimote). What this means is that while you can reuse the core logic, level design, etc., there's still tons of work to do for each additional platform.
True enough. Xbox Achievements and so forth.
I'd still argue, though, that the reason cross-platform games tend to correlate with expensive-to-make games, is that having spend megabucks on designing a game, publishers want as many potential buyers as possible.
(The key exceptions, of course, being Sony or MS exclusives, which those companies use to increase the prestige of their platforms)
New companies make smaller games. Bear in mind these figures are for "major" games.
World of Goo was made by two self-employed men in under a year.
What a lot of dipshits here like to try to point out is that just because a relationship is visible between two measurements, it does not mean that one is necessarily responsible for the other. Of course, even idiots are aware of this,
A surprising number of people (not even idiots) often fail to realise this. Examples abound.
(Yeah, I should probably just leave it)
The stupidest thing I did was attach the reply to the wrong message.
The correlation is between games being multi-platform, and being around double the cost. The post I *meant* to reply to, expressed surprise that multi-platform development should be expensive.
Nitpicking about the exact phrase is not particularly welcome, thanks. We could argue about the subtle nuances of the word "imply". For certain uses you could argue that correlation does "imply" causation in the colloquial use of the term rather than the mathematical use.
Ugh I responded in the wrong place. See "correlation is not causation" above.
Correlation is not causation.
I'd have thought the logic from the publishers would be, if we're going to spend $20M on a game, we'd better make it multi-platform in order to sell more copies.
I don't see why this is surprising. A game has as much visual design per frame as a Hollywood CGI movie, yet is typically much longer. Add to that the interactivity. The hours of dialogue. The playtesting.
It's surprising that games are cheaper to make than movies.
Proper indentation is of course essential.
But "highly indented code", i.e. running out of space on the right, often means you're trying to do too much in one routine. Linus once stated that if you had trouble sticking to the 80 column, 8 char indent kernel coding style rules, you should be breaking your code into more functions.
However certain styles of JavaScript programming (and Java, with anonymous inner classes) cause you to open a lot of brackets -- and therefore indent a long way -- for otherwise quite terse statements. That's what the GP was getting at.
You can do functional programming in languages that don't enforce functional programming.
The GP makes the valid point that people sometimes use anonymous functions when a named function would be clearer.
Instead of (hypothetical language):
// some complex inline anonymous function
... instead ...
// some complex code
myList.map({
});
function transform {
}
myList.map(transform);
It can increase clarity, and reduces the depth of indentation the GGP was complaining about.
aka closures. If the language supports them, anonymous functions can be elegant and readable.
To double every item in a Groovy list:
mySet.collect { it * 2 }
The thing is, these are for writing slick Web pages, not desktop-like apps.
If you want to write web apps that look like desktop apps, and feel like desktop apps to write, try GWT or Cappuccino.
The Red Lion in Hunningham, Warwickshire, uses pneumatic tubes to shuttle food orders to the kitchen (the order, not the food). The tubes are transparent and take a slightly convoluted route, so it's fun to watch.
What you wouldn't expect from that, is that it's a reasonably traditional country pub in most respects...
With the YouTube HTML5-ifier Chrome extension, YouTube pages are rewritten to use the <video> tag.
If/when Chrome for Linux supports extensions, you're golden, for YouTube at least. The same hack for other sites shouldn't be too hard.